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Alternative Theories of Wage Determination and Unemployment in LDC's: The Labor Turnover Model

Quarterly Journal of Economics 1974 88(2), 194 open access
I. Introduction, 194.--II. The model, 196.--III. The market equilibrium, 205.--IV. Optimal allocation of labor and determination of urban wage level, 207.--V. Wage subsidies, 214.--VI. Wages and shadow price of labor in the public sector, 218.--VII. Urban income taxes, 220.--VIII. Concluding comments and summary, 222.--Appendix: "nominal" and "expected" urban wages and the unemployment rate, 223.

Price Scissors and the Structure of The Economy

Quarterly Journal of Economics 1987 102(1), 109 open access
This paper undertakes three sets of tasks: (i) it analyzes positive and normative aspects of price scissors (the domestic terms of trade between agriculture and industry) within nonsocialist as well as socialist LDCs. The critical role of the economy's institutional features (e.g., external trade environment, wage and income determination, and wage-productivity effects) is emphasized. Certain aspects of the Soviet Industrialization Debate and subsequent collectivization are interpreted, (ii) It develops simple rules to delineate who gains and who loses (within agriculture) from changes in terms of trade, (iii) It presents powerful (and informationally parsimonious) rules for Pareto-improving price reforms for cash crops and agricultural inputs.

Externalities in Economies with Imperfect Information and Incomplete Markets

Quarterly Journal of Economics 1986 101(2), 229
This paper presents a simple, general framework for analyzing externalities in economies with incomplete markets and imperfect information. By identifying the pecuniary effects of these externalities that net out, the paper simplifies the problem of determining when tax interventions are Pareto improving. The approach indicates that such tax interventions almost always exist and that equilibria in situations of imperfect information are rarely constrained Pareto optima. It can also lead to simple tests, based on readily observable indicators of the efficacy of particular tax policies in situations involving adverse selection, signaling, moral hazard, incomplete contingent claims markets, and queue rationing equilibria.

Stockholder Unanimity in Making Production and Financial Decisions

Quarterly Journal of Economics 1980 94(3), 543
We show that “spanning” does not imply stockholder unanimity if there is trading in the shares of firms. Each basis vector of the space spanned by all firms' output vectors can be treated like a composite commodity. If, in addition to spanning, firms act as price takers with respect to prices of composite commodities, then there is unanimity. We analyze the spanning assumption for the vector space of contingent claims generated by firms' choices of debt-equity ratios. We show that there is a strong relationship between the Modigliani-Miller theorem, spanning, and the existence of a complete set of markets.

Implicit Contracts and Fixed Price Equilibria

Quarterly Journal of Economics 1983 98, 1
This introductory essay offers a brief guided tour of the main developments in the theory of implicit contracts, from its inception to the present. It is not intended as a survey but, rather, as an appraisal of the progress that has been made, the difficulties that remain, and as an outline of the microeconomic and macroeconomic issues that seem to invite additional work.

Toward a Reconstruction of Keynesian Economics: Expectations and Constrained Equilibria

Quarterly Journal of Economics 1983 98, 199 open access
A two-period model of temporary equilibrium with rationing is presented, paying particular attention to agents' expectations of future constraints. It is shown that with arbitrary constraint expectations many different types of current equilibrium may be consistent with the same set of (current and expected future) wages and prices, and that constraint expectations exhibit "bootstraps" properties (e.g., a higher expectation of Keynesian unemployment tomorrow increases the probability that it will prevail today). In addition, the concept of rational constraint expectations (i.e., perfect foresight of future constraints) is introduced and shown to enhance rather than reduce the effectiveness of government policy.